


my empire of dirt

by kadaransmuggler



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Emotional Abuse, Gen, Motherhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-08
Updated: 2016-12-08
Packaged: 2018-09-07 06:18:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8786842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kadaransmuggler/pseuds/kadaransmuggler
Summary: "She is proud that her daughter is not her."





	

She knows that she is not the mother she could be. That she should be. There are cracks and scars and wounds driving into her daughters because they are a means to an end. That doesn’t change what she is doing, it doesn’t erase the damage that she does to them. It doesn’t erase the guilt she feels each time she settles into a new body, her bones stretching and shifting to accommodate the new presence within them. It never lasts for long, but it follows her through the centuries. 

* * *

There are arguments about this. What is left of Mythal is too far gone to care. There is so little of Flemeth that does. Nothing changes, the arguments are just a token of what once mattered.

 

_She is our daughter._

 

**She is a means to an end. We have a goal in sight.**

 

_Surely we could do less damage than this._

**The damage doesn’t matter. They don’t matter. We will be avenged.**

 

It is an argument that will repeat, inevitably, with each daughter. 

* * *

Sometimes Mythal will grieve. 

 

_Justice. Motherhood. Love_. She has not been any of those things for a long time. She is different now, almost a mirror image of what betrayed her. 

 

_Vengeance. Anger. Betrayal._ These are what she is now, these are what she knows. She thinks again of the knife in her back and of a godhood that remains only as a shadow. 

 

Sometimes, Mythal will remember. 

 

Children running in the halls, laughter echoing, her palaces and her temples and her homes were filled with love and Flemeth will look at the daughters she has and she will wonder where it all went wrong. 

* * *

Her last one is different. Flemeth can tell by the birth alone. It is difficult, and there is a storm, and there are a few long and dreadful moments where she is convinced that this is how she will die before the baby arrives, her lungs emptying in a yell that echoes in the marsh.

 

She names her Morrigan and wonders how much war and death this child will see.

* * *

Nineteen years later she is sending her off with the world’s best chance at being saved. It would be a shame to see it end so soon, when there is so much left she has yet to do. There is something brewing in the air, and Flemeth can feel a new age beginning.

 

She begins to make preparations.

* * *

There is a refugee running from the taint and from the death, and there is a promise made and an exchange and Flemeth knows she is ready for what will come.

 

She is expecting the Warden’s knife in her heart when it comes. A laugh bubbles in her throat. It is never heard.

* * *

It is a long while yet before she is awoken. The dead call to her on Sundermount, a child of the People kneels before her, and she is ready, again, to continue her mission.

 

There would be a reckoning, she was sure. Not only her own, not just the one that had been millennia in the making. Kirkwall felt like war and death and Flemeth wondered if her daughter would ever find her way here. 

* * *

She knows when he wakes. She can feel the vibrations across the Veil he made, and she smiles to herself. It is a sharp and predatory thing and she knows that the end is near. She does not know how it will end. She is ready, though, growing restless as she prowls through the forgotten corners of the world. It has been millennia in the making. She has seen the world change many times. This will be no different. 

* * *

It is only when her daughter is before her again, the boy standing next to her, that she realizes the true extent of the damage she has done. None of her other children had been themselves long enough to bear children of their own.

 

“I am many things, but I will never be the mother you were to me,” the girl says, and it is a shockwave, a violent and angry thing that rips through her.

 

_She is more than a means to an end. She always was._

 

**She was different. The world is different. We must change to adapt.**

_She deserved better. So did the others._

 

**We did what was required. The end is close.**

 

_We could have done better. We could have been better._   
  
  
They will have this argument many times. Sometimes, the _vengeance anger betrayal_ will fade and there will be something left of _justice motherhood love_. It is agonizing in it’s intensity. She has learned to love it, to embrace it and wrestle with the _vengeance anger betrayal_ until it is no longer a rabid thing clawing underneath her skin. 

* * *

“You should not have done that, Dread Wolf,” she says, and she knows that the end is here. She knows he would not have sought her out unless it was to _take_ her.

 

_We shouldn’t have, either._   
  
  
She embraces the end. It isn’t the sharp, angry thing she was expecting. It was soft and gentle and fading and she wonders how she has ever suffered through anything else.  
 

In her final moments, she is nothing but her own. Mythal went first, and there was little time before she would join her.

__  
I’m sorry, she gasps, but it doesn’t quite make it past her lips, bubbling in her throat, and she only hopes that he knows what she means, that she will not die completely unabsolved of this guilt.  
  


She knows she deserves nothing less.

* * *

 She is in the Void. There is nothing but her, endless and infinite. She knows she was not the mother she could have been. She knows that her daughter will do better. She knows there are cracks and scars and smudges that she left on her, on all of them, but she is proud that her daughter is not her.

**Author's Note:**

> i'll never get over how mythal was the goddess of motherhood and how morrigan was so obviously emotionally (and perhaps physically) abused by what was left of her bye


End file.
